who's got the wildcard?
by ace-of-trumps
Summary: Kirihara Akaya versus Fuji Syusuke, on and off the tennis court.
1. between you and me?

**who's got the wildcard?**   
kirihara akaya VS fuji syusuke 

I luff my two favourite tenipurisu. this entire series of encounters between them is based on events that occur in the Genius manga. it's entirely Fuji's fault for choosing to say to himself: 'and the one we most need to watch out for.. second year ace Kirihara Akaya'. 

* * *

** i. between you and me? **

Intermission in a match already full of interruptions, Yagyuu and Niou stunning Seigaku's Golden Pair in more ways than Seigaku would like: tension hangs so heavy in the air, a foul condensation of sweat and fear and the insides of sports bags, Fuji swears he can taste it in his mouth even through the shut lips of his Mona Lisa smile. He slips away from his teammates to the drink fountain. Nobody's there; everyone is riveted to the match, more than enough drama to satisfy a citiful of housewives. Fuji is interested too, but he is also thirsty, and he has his own battle to fight, later. 

He dips his mouth to the foaming water and, at exactly that moment, feels the fall of a long shadow across the ground more than he can see it from this angle. A shimmer in the air, like the heat-daze dancing across burning tarmac on a sleepy summer day; danger approaches from the blind zone, and he's so vulnerable, bowing over the drink fountain for a mouthful of water - 

"Sei-ga-ku," the dark-haired boy reads from Fuji's jacket. He meets Fuji's ice-blue stare with a pair of eyes hard and cold as bullets, almost lost behind a tangle of dense curls; he has the fair, fine-featured face of an angel, but there's a madness in it that makes Fuji wake up, take notice, even as he settles into Harmless Looking Sweetly Smiling Fuji (TM) mode. 

"And you're Ri-k-ka-i," Fuji replies. "But we've met before.. haven't we?" He rattles through a string of long, formal greetings, impossibly boring and detailed; watches as the boy's dark eyes change focus and expression. What do these changes mean? 

"I dunno," the boy says, "maybe you were watching the last match, or something. I might have been making a lot of noise. Jackal says I always make too much noise." He shrugs his shoulders, rubs the bridge of a fine and sharp nose, then looks up with a grin, so much shadow cast across his face: "Hey, Seigaku! You're being very entertaining today. I'm happy, there's something to watch. But it's taking too much time, I don't know if it's worth hanging around for. You couldn't hurry it up, could you?" 

"Sorry, your side seems to be slowing us down a bit," Fuji says with tremendous politeness and a little formal bow. The boy isn't expecting this; Fuji watches his confusion, amused. A tilt of his head, a shift in weight, the way he holds his mouth is suddenly different; such small changes switch the boy from something almost like a monster to an overgrown child. Fuji remembers something he'd overhead, earlier: "Rikkai.. I can feel a tremendous will from them, this year." But that's just somebody else's opinion; everything Fuji knows about this boy has been filtered through someone else. What has he learnt for himself? Shifting his attention back fully to the oversized imp in front of him now, he puts away all past memories and observations. The tv-lined image of Rikkai's terrifying rookie fades into the plasma land of bad commercial dreams, is replaced by sunlight glimmering in hotspots off real flesh, warm puffs of breath into the air, a faint sheen of sweat across pale cheeks.. 

Impatient, the Rikkai boy blows out a puff of air, and his curls bounce off his forehead; his face is clear for a moment, lips puckered and large eyes angled upward, Fuji almost laughs out loud at the sight. In that instant, Fuji says to himself, _eeeh, he's still only a baby!_ and then he is struck by how much that fact means. No matter how tall or strong or menacing this monster is, there are times and spaces when he wears another face. Fuji wonders, of course, how he can twist this to his own use on the tennis courts, but he finds his mind wandering further. He's never given up any kind of opportunity to amuse himself; why stop now? 

"My name is Kirihara Akaya," the boy says. "But you know that, Seigaku; eh?" 

"Of course.. Maybe I'll even see you on the courts later." 

"And how will you see me? Through which net?" 

Kirihara's words are so childishly chosen, so mockingly spoken; it's an unsettling combination, and it takes Fuji a while to realise what he means - will I be playing you with the net between us, or will you only be watching from behind the wire-mesh of the fence? For a moment, there is a glimmer of blue between dark eyelashes as Fuji's happy smile-squint straightens. Does Kirihara even know how rarely this happens, when Fuji Syusuke changes faces? But the smile returns, Kirihara yawns. 

"Maybe over the top of the net," Fuji says. "I'M not a midget." 

It takes Kirihara a while to realise what Fuji means, and when he does he giggles uncontrollably, a rich bubbling of glee snickering out through his nose and mouth and tumbling his dark cherub-curls all about his face. Fuji thinks about Tachibana in hospital, the state of Ryoma's knee, the final freeze-frame of the Rikkai tape: he remembers the cold wind, passing by, a feeling as of dark wings beating across Kirihara's triumphant face. Hard to believe that's the same boy he's facing now. Kirihara looks up in between his impish snickering, and, impulsively, Fuji reaches out to ruffle the mess of black curls on his head. The giggling switches off abruptly, Kirihara looks up, Fuji peeks down and smiles about four inches away, his hand still leaning on Kirihara's head, a pressure as gentle and deadly as the tennis he plays. 

It takes Kirihara a moment to sort out what to do next, which is about as long as Fuji has predicted; so when Kirihara steps back, a two-time split step out of sheer habit, Fuji retracts his hand and bends out of the way. He smiles serenely in return to the scandalized look Kirihara hurls at him. 

"Well, wouldn't you know!" Fuji says. "You're actually quite cute when you're not being a monster." 

Kirihara spits out the rudest words he can think of, but Fuji only laughs; he's already won, he can tell by the other boy's suddenly defensive stance, legs braced and head lowered, shoulders squared aggressively. Someone is walking over, Fuji realises; a dark head and shoulders are approaching, drawn by the scent of Kirihara's temper. "Kuwahara-kun," Fuji says in greeting, "good match. How's the second doubles going? Have they continued?" 

"They're about to," Kuwahara says. Light glares off his smooth-shaven head, still shiny from the sweat of the first doubles, and he has to wipe his eyes every few minutes on the sleeve of his shirt. That's why he's not quite sure if he wants to believe what he's seeing; this Seigaku boy facing off with an angry Kirihara, but with the ball so clearly in the Seigaku court. "That's what I came to tell you, Akaya. Thought you wanted to see." 

"Thanks," Kirihara says. He leaves without a backward glance. Fuji and Kuwahara stare at his retreating back for a while; how he slouches along, high-shouldered and glowering, some unseen smokestack flaring over his head. Kuwahara sighs. 

"He likes to think he's a gangster," he says, his face turned away from Fuji, "and Sanada's not around to slap sense into him all the time. I apologize if he tried to pick a fight-" 

"Actually, this time I did," Fuji says, and the tip of his nose turns pink, lips curving upward even more; eyes disappear entirely into a double wink, which he presents to Kuwahara while saying: "I should be the one apologizing, ne!" 

A mini-bow, and Fuji is gone, walking back to the Seigaku bench. Kuwahara exhales, wipes his eyes again. He returns to the Rikkai bench in time to hear Sanada say to Kirihara, irritably: "Stop kicking the bench, what's wrong with you?" Kirihara stops, he always listens to his vice-captain, but he turns his face away, sulks in a different direction. From the other side of the bench Kuwahara sees Bunta looking at him over a perfectly round sphere of pink bubblegum, and he shrugs. Bunta's hand comes up, two fingers, he nods at their opponents opposite the court; his fingers form a circle, and he looks at Kirihara's grumpy back, raises his eyebrows. Kuwahara sighs and bops the baby of the Rikkai team gently on the head with the bottom of his fist. "Silly Aka-chan,"* he says. "Don't go looking for trouble." 

He gets a distant growl in reply. 

* * *

*'aka-chan' is what you call a baby. 


	2. a speck of dust

**who's got the wildcard?**   
kirihara akaya VS fuji syusuke 

must.. keep.. story.. PG. shouldn't have read doujin with beautiful sensual drawing of Fuji and tongue. Fuji and tongue! *spazzes and passes out* 

* * *

** ii. a speck of dust **

Sanada Genichirou is counting to ten. He is not doing this the normal way; he is walking up and down the long row of dull grey lockers in the tennis team's changing room, and every time he reaches the end of the row he reaches out and taps the last locker with the tips of his fingers. That's one. Then he turns around and paces steadily down the length of the lockers, passing his teammates as he goes, until he reaches the first locker and he taps on it. That's two. Up and down; Yagyuu and Yanagi exchange wise glances, eyes hidden behind glass lens and half-drawn eyelids; they are packing, ready to exit at the first sign of trouble, but with all the dignity of gentlemen. Niou is winding a fresh piece of cord around his ponytail, Marui is unwrapping a fresh piece of bubble gum, and Kuwahara Jackal is giving him the 'you're not going to take a shower while chewing that, are you?' look. The last stretch of bench is empty. Sanada looks at it thoughtfully. 

"I don't know where he is this time," Jackal says quickly. 

"Check with Seigaku," Yanagi says. "Akaya has a 60% greater tendency to go and annoy them after school, as opposed to the other teams." 

"Why is that?" 

Yanagi shrugs. "Insufficient data," he says. "I can never keep up with him. Anyway, trying to detect patterns in Akaya's behaviour is hopeless, especially after school ends; he always buys a 500ml bottle of Coke and disappears in a totally random direction." 

"But ends up at Seigaku?" 

"Not very often, fortunately for them." 

Sanada exhales sharply and pulls his baseball cap perfectly straight, an emperor adjusting his crown. "Hand me my sword," he says, "I mean, my bag, please, thank you, Renji. I'm going to go for a little walk. You call Akaya's tennis club; Yagyuu, you see if anyone's seen Akaya. Niou, Marui, try and see if he's gone to any of his usual hang-out spots." 

"Wharr agraarr rearrarl?" Marui asks indignantly, then, after some impatient _mogu-mogu_-ing, he packs his entire wad of chewing gum into one cheek and repeats, "What about Jackal?" 

"Jackal needs to shower because Bunta threw a bottle of syrup at Jackal," Jackal says, stepping out of his shoes; his feet go _squelch_ in his socks and the rest of the Rikkai team pull a face in sympathy with him. 

"It was a plastic bottle!" 

"You didn't screw the cap back on." 

Marui pops three quick bubbles in Jackal's direction, annoyed, but he shifts himself off the bench and follows Niou, who will spend the rest of the afternoon trying to replace Marui's chewing gum with a pack of trick cardboard gum. Sanada pauses by the drinks machine at the door, chin in hand. A memory is stirring in his mind, but he can't remember what it was. "Renji," he says; his head turns so slightly, as Yanagi walks past him, and as though in answer, Yanagi halts, turns his head by an equally tiny amount, not enough to look each other in the eyes. _But that's the kind of sign language we've made for ourselves, isn't it?_ Sanada thinks. He glances quickly sideways, sees Yanagi's profile, half-swallowed by the light coming through the door; for the first time he realises how dark it is, in the locker room. Yanagi's eyelashes flicker, perhaps he is also taking a swift, sideways glance at Sanada. "It's too big, this room," Yanagi says, "we only ever use the center row of benches anyway, so I didn't turn on the rest of the lights. What were you going to ask?" 

"Nothing." 

But Sanada doesn't move, and so Yanagi waits for him, patiently, watching Yagyuu stride tall and straight down the gravel path to the school buildings, listening to the echoing sound of Jackal in the showers, cursing in Brazilian Portugese as he discovers the full extent of the damage done to his clothes. Eventually Sanada says, still looking into the darkness of the room: "Am I over-reacting, Renji?" 

He is surprised to hear how raw his voice sounds. He knows the words will come out reluctantly, but it feels as if, leaving, they scrape his throat. Yanagi's eyelids lift, a switch to activate his question-answering mechanism. 

"Maybe Seiichi would have made a different decision, in this situation," he says. "But you are here, and he isn't. And the situation would not be the same if he was here, so it wouldn't ever be his decision to make. Do you see.." Yanagi smiles at the sight of the confusion on Sanada's face, and he says, "Ah, I've lost you!" The smile fades, but the emotion remains in his voice when he says, "How about this: you're fulfilling a promise. Seiichi wants us to win, but he also wants you to take care of the team. Maybe your methods are different from his. The intention is still the same." 

Sanada's fingers tap on the smooth surface of the drinks machine. When he eventually looks up, all he says is, "You ought to smile more often," but he moves to leave, and he thumps Yanagi on the shoulder as he goes. Tall and high-shouldered, he never walks without a sense of confidence so strong it scatters people out of his path, but now it seems that nothing, truly, can stop him. Yanagi looks after him, eyelids settling low once again. The drinks machine makes a rumbling noise, but Yanagi pays it no attention; he walks off, his mind apparently dislocated from his body. 

Out of sight behind the drinks machine, Kirihara whimpers. He knows sometimes he must be restrained for his own good, but it would be nice also if his senpais could remember where they tied him up. He tried kicking out at the drinks machine when Jackal passed by him on his way to the showers, but Jackal's back was turned to him and he was still cussing about the syrup in his shoes. Nevermind, Kirihara thinks; he'll see me on his way out, for sure. 

He relaxes, leans back against the drinks machine, closes his eyes. The machine smells of old metal and the rank, metal sourness of coins; apart from that, there's only the usual reek of unwashed shirts stuffed and forgotten in the backs of lockers, the powerful disinfectant smell of someone's foot deodorant spray, a faint tang of something clean and flowery floating warm and damp from the shower room. Kirihara snickers to himself, makes a mental note to inspect Jackal's shower stuff later. In a haze of dim-lit darkness and pleasant dreams of doing evil deeds, it takes him a while to register the sound of footsteps in the room, quiet and cautious. A figure disappearing into the space between the center rows of lockers; who's that? Kirihara automatically tries to stand up and stalk the intruder, but all he does is crash back into the drinks machine and the pillar he's tied to, sitting down very very hard and suddenly on the wooden bench. Shadow across his face; he glares upward, trying to kill with his eyes alone, or at least to see who it is. Shadow filling face, light falling from behind and bouncing off a polished button on a matte black uniform; blue ring of reflected sky tracing the outline of a round head, haloing shivering strands of pale hair. Kirihara sits up very straight and glares into the glow of a familiar smile. 

"Hello to you too!" Fuji Syusuke says, smiling. "I wondered why I passed the entire Rikkai team on my way here, and yet I didn't see you. How are you?" 

Kirihara fumes and frets and wriggles in every direction, but fails to overcome the power of good strong support bandages tied together, and Niou's magical knots. 

"I'm so glad to see you so healthy and energetic," Fuji purrs. "But you've never been this polite and quiet before. You know, I was just passing by, but having the entire Rikkai team minus a particular member walk past you, don't you think that's some kind of sign? I'm so glad I listened to my instincts." 

He sits down on the bench opposite Kirihara, black blazer pulling tight against the curve of his back, forearms braced on thighs; folded hands, fingers twisted together like some cunning puzzle, point downwards, or do they point at Kirihara? He notices how Kirihara has stopped struggling to break free, is fully occupied watching him, like an animal in a cage wondering what the scientist observing it is going to do next. "You know," Fuji says, lifting his hands to cup his chin, "if I had the kind of dreams where I was lost in a dangerous place, and I was not alone - if there was some kind of dark and terrible beastie in this dangerous place with me - if I had those kind of dreams, and suddenly I saw in my dream, the face of this unmentionable monster - do you know what it would look like?" 

Kirihara's eyes sneer at Fuji, staring down his sharp nose; _you_? Fuji laughs. "Oh, that's too kind of you!" he says. "No, I think I would be something small, maybe furry, quite insignificant and not grand at all.. something quite humorous to look at, you know. Like a hedgehog? They close their eyes a lot, too. No.." Fuji flicks tongue over lower lip, so fast it is perhaps something involuntary, not something planned, and his blue eyes focus suddenly, sharp and clean, so that when his mouth says, "Not me," the rest of him, angled like an arrow pointing to Kirihara, says, _you_. 

Air seems to concentrate and strain in the silence that follows; the sound of falling water from the showers loses meaning, becomes just white noise from another world. An upward curve of mouth bears a different meaning when the blue eyes above it stare unblinkingly, no longer fully shut; no longer can be called a smile. Kirihara stares back, but something is breaking behind his fierce front. Suddenly he shies his head to one side, lifting a shoulder but not high enough - a frustrated bubble growls in his throat, one eye blinks and creases furiously. Fuji, watching, feels his eyes curving shut once again. 

"Is something troubling you?" he asks. 

Kirihara glares at him from one dark eye. 

"I don't think I should untie you," Fuji says. "I mean, things are always done for a reason. Also, I think our conversations are more enjoyable like this. But you've got something in your eye, hmm?" 

Almost guiltily, that single dark eye flinches. Kirihara's face shifts to look down for a moment, and Fuji's insane eye for detail fixes on the forward slump of Kirihara's thin shoulders, pulling his collar back and deepening a long hollow of collarbone that disappears into the buttoned fold of white shirt. He is surprised to feel his own breath catching in his throat; even more surprised to feel himself standing up, leaning over Kirihara, looking down, one hand slowly coming closer to some great discovery. The whole matter has an urgent feel to it. It is as though he has been granted the chance to come across the beast in a moment of vulnerability, so that he might reach into it and - what is it there, what does his fingertip find, tracing the edge of one small ear? The peculiar sensation of thin cartilage bound by warm skin, the curiously pointed edge at the top of the ear, arches and curves like the inside of a seashell. Fingertips draw a line, follow the hard contour of cheekbone, dance up the slope of narrow nose, glide along the thick arch of eyebrow, riding precarious on the arch of browbone, and finally settle on shut eyelid, run along double-row of eyelashes shivering together. 

"I can't find anything," Fuji says. Only later, when he is recalling this encounter, will he remember that he was whispering. "Maybe it was just a speck of dust." 

Beneath his fingers, both eyes snap open, dark with a red glow around their edges; muscle bunches as feet leave the ground. Fuji smells danger but doesn't react in time; an iron grip tightens around his waist and the hard heels of Kirihara's sneakers dig into the small of his back, won't let go no matter how hard he tries to push or claw or beat them away. Some kind of mad giggle tickles in Kirihara's throat, a sensation of madness passing through his body, passing to Fuji, who is growing short of breath. In a very rare moment of panic he grabs at handfuls of Kirihara's curls and hears a thin whine whistles past the gag in the boy's mouth; when he relaxes his hold out of pity, Kirihara headbutts him savagely, skulls connecting so hard they ring separately but in resonance for a minute after impact. 

Fuji's head slumps forward, Kirihara's eyes widen in alarm and he twists his head aside so that Fuji's face lands in the crook of his neck instead of right smack on his own face. Tension bleeds dry from the atmosphere, and he unwinds his legs, lowers them shakily to the floor. All he wants to do is to go to sleep and wake up in his bed, look at the alarm clock and then go back to sleep again, but he can't sleep sitting up, his shoulders and head are aching like hell, and there is something unsettling in how smoothly Fuji's body settles into his, Fuji's thin hands still tangled in his hair. So silent that you can almost the dust motes singing as they drift in a shaft of light falling through the door, not even the sound of water any more.. 

Kirihara's eyes jerk wide open and he looks up. A figure tall and dark and motionless as a statue is watching him; it shuts its open jaw with a snap as he looks at it. 

"Aka-chan," Jackal says, speaking for the first time in the two minutes he has stepped out of the shower, "there you are." 

He steps carefully around Fuji's limp legs, and unties the gag in Kirihara's mouth. The first thing Kirihara says is, "You're not talking to _anyone_ about this." 

"Silent as the grave," Jackal says. "But I think you should talk to each other about this. And it should be supervised. Okay?" 

"Okay. Please untie me now?" 

"In a minute. I have a feeling I'd better shift this guy somewhere else where you can't get at him first." 

Kirihara growls, but he doesn't complain, only leans back and watches Jackal carefully lift Fuji off to a discreet place. The red glow has left his eyes, but the triumphant glow on his face is going to be there for a while. 

* * *

so.. the kirihara-fuji game is now 1-1 xD 


End file.
